United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The other bank of the stream was open ground a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge.
The fight for the northern half of the town was not serious, merely part of Macomb's prearranged training course; but when the Americans retired across the Saranac, the planks of the bridges were torn up, loop-holed barricades were built along the southern bank, and no effort spared to prepare for a desperate resistance. Every man that could hold up a gun was posted on the lines of Plattsburg.
The fort was in shape a parallelogram, some two hundred and fifty feet long and half as wide. It was more completely finished than the majority of its kind, though little or no iron was used in its construction. At each corner was a two-storied loop-holed block-house to act as a bastion.
But all our interest in a few moments was focussed upon a most imposing ruin, a real Windsor Castle of a rudimentary type, which commanded a hilltop on a table-land on the right, great walls rearing themselves up to the sky, towers defending every corner, a turreted gate-house the entrance, and the whole loop-holed, grim-looking enough.
By Mexican law each must be visible from the adjoining two, and in this pitched and tumbled country this requires many. Beyond the village we found, about the old Spanish workings, ancient, roofless, stone buildings with loop-holed turrets for bandits and niches for saints.
When a group of families moved out into the wilderness they built themselves a station or stockade fort; a square palisade of upright logs, loop-holed, with strong blockhouses as bastions at the corners. One side at least was generally formed by the backs of the cabins themselves, all standing in a row; and there was a great door or gate, that could be strongly barred in case of need.
Yet principally all that met her straining eyes was sterile desolation. Here and there a great ugly water tank reared its hideous shape beside the track, the engine always pausing for a fresh supply. Beside it was invariably a pile of coal, a few construction cars, a hut half buried under earth, loop-holed and barricaded, with several rough men loafing about, heavily armed and inquisitive.
Without the whole of these buildings stood a strong stockade, about twelve feet high, loop-holed for musquetry, with a bastion at each angle, facing the four principal points of the compass, on each of which was placed a small gun, that the men had been trained to work.
Half-way up it was loop-holed in long narrow slits for the fire of the defenders. But on the other hand the trees grew up to within a hundred yards of it, and formed a screen for the attack, while the garrison was so scanty that it could not spare more than twenty men at the utmost for each face.
They invariably reside in houses or hovels built of stone and timber, which are generally situated on some commanding eminence, and are fortified and loop-holed for self-defence.
Word Of The Day